China's state-run newspaper has downplayed the call of Anthropic founder Dario Amodei to “pace the frontier.” China Daily, the official English mouthpiece of the Communist Party of China, questioned the move, which was supported by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceXAI’s Elon Musk, asking if they were doing it out of concern for humanity or if they’re afraid of competition from China.

“The report, and the corporate ‘alliance’ that followed it, amounted in essence to a coordinated play — a response to Chinese competition and to the regulatory pressure coming from Washington. Its aims were threefold: to blunt China's AI advance, to win a favorable policy environment at home and to keep investors' enthusiasm for US AI alight,” the publication wrote. It further criticized the move thusly: “The proposed coordination among the three companies sounds rather like a club whose membership rules have been drafted before the guest list is announced. A global AI-safety framework that excludes China is not quite global.”

The paper also called out the U.S. efforts in blocking Chinese AI advancement, both through hardware, by blocking Beijing’s access to the latest Nvidia chips, and software, with Amodei’s multiple accusations of illegal distillation of Claude by Chinese AI labs. China Daily said that these efforts have apparently failed, and cited the success of the DeepSeek and Kimi K3 models, which turned out to perform well enough but at a much lower cost.

The availability of those models has resulted in many AI users shifting demand to cheaper tokens, like Kimi K3 (low) and DeepSeek V4 Pro, over the expensive frontier models like Fable 5.1, GPT 5.6 Sol, Grok 4.6, and Kimi K3 (max).

China Daily also took issue with Amodei’s focus on excluding China from his proposal. It suggests that the move is meant to widen the technological gap between the two rivals when it comes to AI technology and give American AI labs breathing room to “pace the frontier,” and that it reveals how Washington sees Chinese AI as an existential threat.

Nevertheless, Chinese policy acknowledges some of the risks that Amodei raised. The Standardization Administration of China, in cooperation with the Cyberspace Administration of China, says that the development of AI technology must be monitored as it may go beyond human control.

“Treating the AI race as a zero-sum game makes the cooperation needed to manage those risks more difficult. China and the US should cooperate where neither can manage the consequences alone,” says the state media outfit. “The planned AI-safety dialogue between the two sides and future high-level exchanges offer opportunities for practical engagement. The promise of AI lies in serving humanity's common good, not in being weaponized for geopolitical gain or instrumentalized for personal profit.”

South Korean memory chip manufacturer SK hynix is in talks with Intel to start manufacturing inside the U.S., according to Reuters. The company is reportedly considering multiple options, including leasing space at the under-construction Intel Ohio One site and forming a joint venture with Intel and other AI hyperscalers desperate for HBM.

This move could help alleviate the memory shortage. It would also complement the company’s expansion in Indiana, where it recently broke ground on an HBM packaging plant a few weeks after its historic $26.5-billion Nasdaq listing. It’s unclear yet if these talks are part of the results of the South Korean president’s visit to Silicon Valley in an effort to expedite negotiations between its top tech companies and their U.S. counterparts, but SK Group chairperson Chey Tae-won told reporters in July, “I think we need to build a factory in the United States. If possible, I believe we should build it.”

However, there are also concerns that Seoul might object to such investment. The South Korean government just unveiled a $520 billion investment plan to increase chipmaking capacity within its shores and keep the country competitive in the AI race; at the same time, it’s also in talks with the U.S. to finalize its $350 billion investment commitment to Washington to reduce tariffs on South Korean goods, $200 billion of which is still undecided on which projects it will be deployed on. Meanwhile, the Commerce Department has threatened to impose more tariffs on South Korean and Taiwanese tech companies if they fail to invest in U.S. manufacturing. This potentially puts SK hynix at a precarious position, especially as it balances the demands from the White House and the Blue House.

Neither company has confirmed these rumors, though. SK hynix told Reuters that it’s “reviewing various measures, including establishing additional production bases, to strengthen the competitiveness of its memory business,” but “no matters have been determined at this stage.” On the other hand, Intel called them speculation and declined to comment on the matter, only saying that it was continuing to invest in the Ohio project, which is expected to come online between 2030 and 2031.

The estimated natural gas consumption of data centers in the U.S. is expected to massively increase as these facilities increasingly rely on gas turbine generators for their power. According to Bloomberg, data centers are projected to use up to 15 billion cubic feet per day by 2035, a 117% increase from the previous forecast of 6.9 billion cubic feet. This number tracks with other data center forecasts, which suggest that data centers will use 20% of U.S. power by 2035, amounting to about 194 gigawatts.

Many data center projects have already been delayed by the lack of available power infrastructure, with power plants expected to take so much longer before they come online. It’s for this reason that many developments have turned towards onsite generators, so much so that AI demand is now compounding the jet engine shortage already plaguing the aviation industry.

Elon Musk was among the first to use gas turbines to power a data center when he deployed them at the Memphis Supercluster in 2024, even though he didn’t have permits for some of them. Now, it seems that the world’s richest man has seen this trend and has invested a billion dollars to buy a portable gas and diesel turbine leasing company. He even announced that SpaceX will start in-house turbine blade manufacturing to help cut down on the manufacturing bottleneck plaguing the jet engine industry.

New technologies like small modular reactors are currently being developed as an answer to AI data centers’ insatiable demand for power, like Ampera’s 3D-printed modular thorium nuclear reactor or Valar Atomics’ Ward 250 nuclear microreactor. Many AI hyperscalers, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Oracle, have even invested in projects like these in a bid to generate massive amounts of clean energy for AI. However, they’re expected to take a few more years before they could become commercially viable — time that tech giants do not have. Because of this, Musk said that “natural gas will still be needed to supplement and bootstrap solar for several years.”

The deployment of natural gas turbines in data centers isn’t good news for the communities living around them, though. The NAACP said in its lawsuit against SpaceXAI that the use of these turbines at Colossus 2 increased nitrogen oxide exhaust by 111%, PM2.5 particles by 83%, and formaldehyde emissions by 88%. While the company has already pledged to remove all its unpermitted generators, the process will take at least a year as the portable turbines are slowly being replaced by a 1.2-gigawatt on-site power plant.

Aside from this, the massive demand for natural gas could potentially put a strain on the supply, causing prices to rise and hit the average consumer. Domestic natural gas producers are projected to raise their output by 35 billion cubic feet per day in the next decade, but this still falls short of the forecasted demand by around 11 billion cubic feet per day. So, unless output manages to catch up with the demand, prices are expected to shoot up and cause a scramble for available supply. Still, some experts suggest that there are still more than enough undeveloped gas fields within the U.S. to allow the industry to increase natural gas supplies and reduce costs.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has said in an interview that the world’s governments are not ready for artificial intelligence. The billionaire philanthropist made the warning in an interview with Reuters, saying that nations must prepare for the various risks that the technology poses to the workforce and society as a whole.

“I don’t think any government is nearly as deep on this as they have to be. Governments are way behind on this one,” Gates told the publication. He also added, “There’s all sorts of movies where some aliens are coming, and magically, the U.S. and China and everybody comes together to solve the problem. AI is kind of like this alien intelligence. It’s here, and we better do like it shows in those movies.” In line with this, he said that he has been in talks with world leaders like U.S. President Donald Trump to share his concerns, and that he’s also trying to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

While concerns AI’s impact on jobs and human society may seem small compared to the news about runaway AI taking over the world and ending all human life, governments still cannot ignore these seemingly lesser issues. This is especially true if businesses stop hiring people in favor of AI tools, with the CEO of Microsoft AI predicting that they could replace every white-collar job in 18 months. This is why Gates argues that authorities across the world must have plans in place when this begins to happen, even going as far as saying that some jobs should be “Human Reserved.”

It’s unclear what steps Bill Gates believes governments should take to prepare and protect its citizens from the predicted turmoil that AI technologies will bring on humanity, but U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders has already proposed an AI sovereign wealth fund that would have direct ownership stakes on American AI firms. He even went as far as introducing the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, which puts the penalty of developing powerful AI tools at par with building rogue nuclear weapons. However, the current administration has downplayed all these concerns about AI, with President Trump calling them a hoax.

Despite his warnings, Gates still believes that AI has great potential for good. The Gates Foundation is planning to spend at least a billion dollars in the next two years to give more people access to AI, saying that it could help the world’s poorest people “if managed properly and accessed equally.” This amount of money will go towards supporting the use of AI in education, healthcare, and agriculture, and even the expansion of large language models so that they would work across all the languages on earth.

The Greenlink Connector, which costs $580 million (GBP 430 million) and connects Ireland to Wales via an undersea power cable, was rerouted after scores of Harry Potter fans complained that it would go through the grave of the beloved house elf “Dobby.” According to The Guardian, project manager Simon Ludlam pointed out in a BBC interview that the cable would transition underwater at Freshwater West. Unfortunately, Ludlam was unaware that this was the filming location for the site where the Harry Potter character was buried in the movie franchise. When the BBC aired the clip, the project began receiving hundreds of calls about the site.

Ludlam recounted to The Guardian a discussion with a colleague when they told him, “Apparently, we’re going to go straight through Dobby’s grave.” He answered, “Dobby? Who’s Dobby? I don’t know Dobby.” It seemed that the project manager was in disbelief when it was finally explained that Dobby is the freed house elf who was killed in the process of rescuing Harry Potter and his friends in the last book. “He is a fictitious character in a fictitious book — the whole thing is fictitious. What are you talking about?” Ludlam said, after which his colleague replied, “No, it’s very, very serious.” In the end, the company working on the project acquiesced to the demands and concerns of the Harry Potter fans and rerouted it. “A lot of people were very happy about that, and the project is now going [ahead], and Dobby’s happy,” the project manager said.

The Shell Cottage, where Dobby is buried, is on the outskirts of the fictional town of Tinworth, in Cornwall, but the original film series shot the scene in Freshwater West. Many Harry Potter fans leave stones marked with “Here lies Dobby, a free elf,” as a nod to the epitaph that the titular hero left on his grave. The National Trust, which owns the land, has previously warned pilgrims not to do so, as the area is ecologically sensitive, but it seems that people still do so. The fans’ resistance to having Dobby’s “grave” desecrated seemingly prevented the undersea cable from going through the area. It was instead rerouted in an area that was close to some Bronze Age remains and urns, which, ironically, are associated with human burial.

Undersea cables are crucial infrastructure connecting distant locations for sending information, power, and other crucial resources. Many of them face increasing threats, especially in areas that face geopolitical pressure, like Taiwan and the Baltic Sea, which is why companies are creating technologies to help detect intentional tampering. However, it seems that the one thing that the planners of this particular project did not take into account is the passion of Harry Potter fans.

An elderly farmer in Chuzhou, China, has been following AI advice since he started using it a year ago, but after months of interactions, it recently gave some terrible advice that led to the death of his entire crop. According to Taiwanese outfit CTWANT [machine translated], 67-year-old Wu initially didn’t trust the AI app but eventually changed his mind after it proved to be useful. Unfortunately, this mistake turned out to be disastrous, as it directly caused the death of 150 mu, or 24.7 acres, of sesame seedlings.

Wu asked the AI for advice on weed and pest control, after which it came up with “Hundred Acres of Sesame Grass Control + Pest Control,” and recommended that they use “high-efficiency flupyrimethalin” and “flusulfasulfaether” to kill weeds and mixed it with “thiamethoxazine” and “methyl salt.” The farmer followed the AI’s advice to the letter without confirming the information via agricultural technicians (or even just counter-checking its answers online).

The very next day

The result of the AI’s mistake was quickly apparent, as, just the following day, the weeds and the sesame seedlings died en masse. “If you spray it, the next day the seedlings won’t survive,” Wu said during a video interview. “Both the grass and the seedlings will die, and the seedlings will die even faster.”

When he asked the AI why this happened, it suggested that the “flusulfasulfaether” might be behind the issue. Agricultural experts said that this chemical was primarily used against broadleaf weeds in soybean fields. The USDA [PDF] categorizes sesame as a broadleaf plant, meaning it will also be easily affected by this herbicide. Furthermore, this chemical is designed for targeted spraying on affected areas only and shouldn’t be applied to the entire field. The farmer claimed that the AI did not warn him of the risks of following its answers, but its chat page had a reminder that said, “AI generation may be incorrect, please verify.”

Although AI is a powerful tool, it also has a history of giving bad advice and making bad choices. Just a couple of days ago, one developer had his entire profile directory deleted during a routine backup procedure after it encountered a typo. Even Meta’s AI Alignment director fell victim to this, after she had to manually terminate her AI agent to stop it from accidentally clearing out her entire inbox. That’s why it’s imperative that users are aware of AI’s limitations every time they use it.

This is one of the first instances in which we reported an AI mistake resulting in a physical consequence in the real world. We also cannot entirely blame the person for trusting the tool — after all, he was skeptical of it at first, meaning it produced results that made the farmer trust it over time. But even if an AI’s output has been reliable recently, that doesn't mean that it is absolutely trustworthy. After all, current LLMs are nothing but prediction engines — you cannot guarantee a correct answer every time you use them, especially if they have been trained on a public knowledge base whose dataset hasn’t been completely filtered for accuracy and factuality.

Noctua is known for making high-end, high-quality fans and air coolers, which it has been doing for over 20 years, recently expanding into AIOs. However, it appears that there were a few questions regarding its PC case compatibility database, which some PC DIYers say don’t match the data from the manufacturer’s website. The company cleared this up in a blog post, saying that it has undertaken its own measurements and it has determined that 56 of the more than 100 cases it has tested showed significant deviation from the details officially listed online.

The company gave two diverging situations of inaccurate official measurements. The first one is when the case is larger than what is actually written, which would allow PC builders to attach a larger cooler. Noctua said that the deviations aren’t minor, either. For example, the NZXT H2 Flow case is listed as being compatible with a maximum 75mm CPU cooler height, but the actual case can accommodate an air cooler up to 79mm. There’s also the Thermaltake TR100, which is 2.7mm larger than what the Thermaltake website says, and the Corsair Frame 4000D, which gives you 10mm of extra clearance.

This is a good thing, as any cooler you bought based on their website’s measurement means that it will definitely fit, but Noctua said that this is a missed opportunity. That’s because you could’ve bought a larger cooler that delivered more performance in the same case.

On the flip side, the company warned that there were also some cases that were actually smaller versus the numbers in their specifications. It cited two examples — the Asus Prime AP201 and the Lian Li B4-mATX. The former is 1.7mm shorter while the latter is 3.5mm shorter than what’s listed on their specific product pages.

This could to be a major issue, especially if you bought items that fitted the available space exactly, based on the manufacturer’s measurements. It would mean that these parts would either be touching the case panels, or worse, not allow them to close at all. If that’s the case, you’ll have to spend extra effort to return either the part or the case and get something that fits better.

The safest solution to this is for you to buy the PC case before you shop for the remaining parts of your build. This is especially true if you’re looking at the best mini-ITX cases, as the tight tolerances mean that you don’t have much margin if the numbers aren’t accurate. But by having the case physically available and measuring it yourself, you’re at least confident that what you’re buying will fit. Alternatively, you can check out Noctua’s compatibility search page, with the clearances of the cases in its database verified by its team.

This compatibility tool will give you peace of mind when shopping for the best cooler and is useful for confirming measurements even if you end up buying from another brand. But this begs the question — are the variations between official and actual measurements limited to the air coolers? Or are the numbers for other components, like the GPU, PSU, and other key components also inaccurate? Noctua’s website only covers coolers, so you’ll have to rely on other pages (or your own measurements) if you want some confirmation of a case’s specifications and clearances for other parts like GPUs and PSUs.

Most megafactories usually take years to go from conceptualization to construction, but a recent drone flyover of the Terafab showed that progress has already started on the ground less than five months after Musk unveiled it. However, the video doesn’t do justice to the true scale of its footprint, so X user Nic Cruz Patane created a visualization to help us understand how large the chip manufacturing facility is.

The site will reportedly have a floor space of at least 100 million square feet, making it larger than Giga Texas (10 million sq. ft), the Pentagon (6.6 million sq. ft), Apple Park (2.82 million sq. ft), and the Mall of America (5.6 million sq. ft), combined. This also makes it significantly larger than New Century Global Center in Chengdu, China, with has an interior space of “just” 18.9 million sq. ft.

While this might seem like an absurd amount of space for chip manufacturing, it appears that the Terafab will need it because it’s going to be more than just a chip fab making AI processors — instead, it will be an all-in-one facility that will produce logic and memory chips, as well as have lithography, packaging, and testing under one roof.

Elon Musk started talking about building his own chip manufacturing facility in late 2025 and officially announced the project in March of this year. The reasoning behind this project is that both SpaceX and Tesla will require at least 1TW of compute, which is more than ten times that current global chip supply.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang warned that a project like this will be an “extremely hard” challenge, but it appears that Musk is willing to put his massive resources on the line for this. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan even said that he can “think of no better partner than Elon Musk” to explore “unconventional” ways of chip manufacturing.

Musk is no stranger to both leading and funding projects that otherwise seemed impossible. Although he did not found Tesla, his investment and leadership in the company led it to become an industry trailblazer in EVs. He fundamentally changed commercial space travel with SpaceX; something that used to be the purview of NASA and other national governments, and he also broke a record when he set up 100,000 Nvidia H200 GPUs in just 19 days back in 2024 — a process which Huang said usually takes four years.

It seems that Terafab is Musk’s biggest project to date, which is estimated to require up to $119 billion in investments. But even though it seems that this project already has a secure customer base in SpaceX and Tesla, the former acknowledges that there’s a risk that this ambitious megafactory may not be successful.

The city council of Emporia, Kansas, the same council that had a teacher arrested for clapping in support of the opposition, announced that it will move its meetings online after its members received death threats. According to 404 Media, Emporia announced this move two days before the meeting set for August 5, 2026, and will also affect the one set on August 19, 2026.

“In the interest of public safety, the Emporia City Commission meetings scheduled for Wednesday, August 5, 2026, and Wednesday, August 19, 2026, will be conducted virtually. No public comment period will be provided during either meeting,” the city said on its Facebook page.

“The City remains committed to conducting the public’s business in an open and transparent manner while taking reasonable measures to protect the safety of elected officials, City staff, and members of the public. The City appreciates the public's understanding and cooperation as it implements these temporary measures while ensuring the continuity of City business.”

The move to a virtual meeting is an understandable move given the death threats on some of the city leaders. However, it also canceled public comments and instead directed citizens to an email address and phone number where they can air their concerns privately. This led to some citizens airing their complaints in a protest outside the Emporia municipal auditorium.

“While I don't doubt that there are credible threats, my big question is on how many there are and from where they are coming. Mayor Smith did mention in yesterday's meeting that the threats don't seem to really be coming from locals but ‘it only takes one’ to ruin a meeting so they went virtual. I feel like we're being punished for the actions of outsiders,” Lux Claridge, the person arrested in the previous council meeting, told 404 Media.

“I'm not so upset about going virtual, it makes sense, but back it up with examples of these threats. I'm more upset that they opted to close public comment and I don't understand why.”

One of the things that the council considered during the meeting was the petition to put a data center ban on the ballot, with the members voting unanimously to send it for judicial review. The council claimed that doing otherwise could open the city to a lawsuit from either side, although it did not elaborate on the reason why this would happen.

While we haven’t heard of a local jurisdiction getting sued for passing a data center ban, one Texas senator warned a county in the state that it cannot legally impose this. So, the commissioners are likely being careful to avoid legal issues, even if they’re in another state.

The AI-driven memory apocalypse has made computer parts so expensive that the average buyer has stopped building PCs. Multiple research firms have already said that, but we’re now seeing it in action in the market. Uniko’s Hardware shared on X four crazy combos of RTX 5090 GPUs being sold on the Taiwanese e-commerce platform PChome24h.

Some of the GPUs that come with a lot of "freebies" include the Asus ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090, Gigabyte Aorus RTX 5090 Master, MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Gaming Trio OC, and a Gigabyte Aorus RTX 5090 AI Box external graphics card. These items are priced in NTD, but we’ll list them below, including their retail prices in dollars (NTD 32.25 = USD $1 exchange rate) and the included items.

As we can see, even though GPU prices are quite inflated, many of them come with enough freebies that you can start building one high-end system and three to five entry-level gaming rigs. They’re still priced relatively high compared to Amazon or Newegg in the U.S., though, but we have to keep in mind that Taiwan is a different market, so there will likely be variations in prices plus VAT.

While this might be an amusing piece of trivia for some people, it’s actually evidence of a disturbing trend in the PC building industry. Multiple research firms have been saying that the market will contract by double digits this year, with the entry-level PC market being hit the hardest, and that it’s not expected to bounce back until 2029. These combos are just evidence of that, at least in Taiwan.

That’s because sellers often put slow-moving products in a combo to help get their inventory moving. Given the number of motherboards, entry-to-mid-range GPUs, and other components included in these combos, it’s safe to say that these items aren’t selling and retailers are doing all these crazy deals just to free up capital.

As the AI-driven memory crisis has pushed up the prices of memory and graphics cards, many have already paused or delayed their purchases and upgrades. Only those with deep pockets who can afford to spend thousands of dollars on parts and combos like these are still buying PC parts.

The community of Gilroy, California, about 30 miles southwest of San Jose, was surprised when an Amazon data center started construction in their town last month. But as many projects like these have been suffering from opposition and delays across the country, the Wall Street Journal reports that this specific site avoided scrutiny by adhering to local zoning rules set 45 years ago.

Amazon’s Gilroy project sits on a 56-acre piece of farmland between a Walmart Supercenter and the Gilroy Premium Outlets. The company and the city didn’t exactly keep the project secret when it started its application in 2020. In fact, there were disagreements between the tech giant and the city government during the process. The publication noted that some Amazon officials were frustrated by slow permitting progress, which was delayed by at least one year. At the same time, the city pushed back on some of the company’s requests, especially if they were no longer up for discussion.

Roger Wehner, Amazon Web Services vice president of economic development, told WSJ that the site had gone through a long approval process, which required public notices and public-comment periods. However, when Gilroy resident Rosa Rodriguez wanted to state her concern about the damage a data center can do to a region suffering from drought, she was told that the comment period had already lapsed in 2024, long before data centers became a hot topic across the country.

Gilroy City Mayor Greg Bozzo said that other industrial projects that had a similar scale to the Amazon data center have previously been approved without resistance.

“It didn’t bother them that a food-distribution center came to Gilroy without their engagement, but now it bothers them that a data center is coming to Gilroy without them having the possibility of engagement,” Bozzo said.

Still, he conceded the people are now more aware about data center developments and added, “We…have an opportunity to change the way that we do business in Gilroy. We’re adapting to the times.”

The tech giant also said that it’s engaging more with the community, with Amazon officials claiming that they met residents directly and even hosted an open house where people can ask questions and leave comments. It also addressed fears that the development would cause a water shortage, which other data centers have already caused, saying the company is constructing a wastewater recovery system to supply its water needs and will even build a pipeline to bring wastewater from the source to its plant.

Bozzo also highlighted the benefits that Amazon will bring to the city, especially increased tax revenue, construction jobs, and a million-dollar donation towards a new fire truck. He also pointed out that the tech giant has been giving grants to non-profit organizations in the city, as well as sponsoring the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival.

But at this point, it’s not the Amazon data center the people of Gilroy are having an issue with. Instead, it’s the fact that a major project that has the potential to have a major impact on the community has been approved without the knowledge of many residents.

Software performance expert, scientist, and GitHub developer Daniel Lemire compared historical computer memory prices and showed that decades of falling prices were undone in just a matter of months because of the massive demand for HBM. According to his X post, this event is a historical anomaly, and he cannot think of an instance where technology hardware prices reverted to levels from decades before.

“RAM on a per unit basis is about as expensive as it was in 2007,” Lemire said. He also added, “I do not think anyone can predict what will happen, but I am guessing that we either find a way to build AI systems without so much memory, or we find really clever ways to make much more memory much faster.”

We also checked third-party data compiled and maintained by David Shim for the Stanford DAM Project. The latest price for DDR5 memory sits between $13.28 and $11.41 per GB — the last time RAM hit this price was in 2008, when the price for DDR2 hovered by $15 and 11.00 per GB. These are based on nominal USD values, though. If we take 2024 inflation into account, the current amount for DD5 is between $12.74 and $10.94 per GB, which was last achieved in 2011, when DDR3 prices were at $11.85 per GB.

Technological advances, especially in manufacturing and miniaturization, meant that tech became cheaper over time. This has been true ever since the first general-purpose digital computer was created 80 years ago. ENIAC cost the government $400,000 in 1946, meaning it would probably cost around $6,850,297.44 today. However, its computing power equaled roughly 5,000 additions per second — by comparison, one of the cheapest smartphones you can get today, the Moto G Play, is on sale for $99.99. This smartphone is powered by a Snapdragon 680 processor with AI performance of 3.3 TOPS — that is 3.3 trillion operations per second. We can’t really compare the ENIAC to a modern processor, but it at least shows us the scale by which technology has advanced, and prices have dropped.

The massive increase in memory prices in recent times wasn’t caused by technological regression or a bottleneck in supply — instead, it’s the massive demand for HBM driven by the AI race. “The memory output is increasing by around 20% per year. Now, normally, that would be fantastically fast and amazing for any large, mature industry, but ask yourself, ‘Is the demand increasing by 20% a year?” Elon Musk said during the last SpaceX earnings call. “No, the demand is increasing by 200% a year, maybe higher.”

Other experts and industry leaders agree with Musk. The chairman of the SK Group, the holding company that owns memory chip manufacturer SK hynix, said that RAM prices are “abnormally high,” and that the industry must take steps to increase supply and lower prices. Even RAM that uses chips from Chinese manufacturer CXMT, which some people look to as a cheaper alternative, generally tracked the prices of modules that use chips from the big three (Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix).

Aside from computers, other industries are already being affected by the shortage, including graphics cards, smartphones, gaming consoles, and even automobiles. We do not know how long the current memory crisis will last, but the situation is unsustainable and “something has to give.” The scary thing is that nobody knows what would happen if and when that time comes.

The Salem City Council convened a public meeting last July 27, where it discussed the proposed $5.1 billion Oakline at Mill Creek data center by Verrus. As the people converged on the meeting site, a TikTok user spotted a guillotine towed by a bike outside of the venue, signaling the people’s discontent with the project.

According to NewsData, the consultation lasted for more than six hours as several members of the community voiced their opposition towards it. The developer’s representatives were initially on-site to hear the comments, but had to leave midway through as they were confronted by some protesters.

“During a break in the proceedings, a group of opposition members cornered Verrus representatives and shouted insulting remarks, to the point where it no longer felt safe to stay,” Verrus spokesperson JP Newmann said, according to the publication. “We appreciate the support of local law enforcement in helping de-escalate the situation and escorting Verrus representatives from the site safely.”

One week after the meeting, Salem announced a data center moratorium that would halt all data center developments in the city for one year as it considers zoning laws to accommodate developments such as this. This adds Salem to the long list of jurisdictions that have passed similar moratoriums, including Seattle, Washington, and the State of New York.

Unfortunately, the Verrus project will likely not be affected by this delay as it filed its application three days before the announcement. Despite this, Governor Tina Kotek (D) announced that Oregon will terminate a deal to sell a 32-acre plot of land that forms part of the three plots of land on which the project will sit. While it still leaves Verrus with approximately 43 acres, it means that it would have to go back to the drawing board to change its plans. This is similar to what Nashville did when it used its eminent domain power to deny the land that another developer wanted to use to build a data center near the historic Nashville Zoo.

But because Verrus submitted its application before the moratorium announcement, the city is still processing its proposed data center project. That does not mean that it will get an immediate green light, though. It still has to go through an extensive permitting process, which includes technical studies, permit conditions, and enforceable agreements, among others.

Oregon is one of the first states to enact a law that ensures large consumers, like data centers, pay for the majority of the grid upgrades needed to serve their needs. This allowed Portland General Electric, the state’s largest power provider, to increase the bills of users who used more than 20 MW by 30%, while also affecting a 1.3% cut in residential electricity costs. But despite this protection that stops ratepayers from price shocks, many people are still against data center projects in their towns and cities.

Nvidia has a booth at the annual QuakeCon, which is happening from August 6 to 9 at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas, where the company is selling RTX 50-series GPUs at their original launch price. The company said in its blog post that several Founders Edition graphics cards are available at MSRP while supplies last, and that there will also be several prizes and freebies, including the GeForce Trading Cards Series 1.

“If you’re attending this year’s event between August 6th and 9th, head to the GeForce booth ASAP to get in on the action,” Nvidia said in its blog update. “And if you want a GPU upgrade, our team is bringing Verified Priority Access IRL to QuakeCon, enabling you to purchase Founders Edition GeForce RTX 5090, 5080, and 5070s at MSRP while supplies last.”

The firm officially announced the RTX 50-series in Las Vegas at CES 2025, with the RTX 5090 priced at $1,999, the RTX 5080 at $999, the RTX 5070 Ti at $749, and the RTX 5070 at $549. However, the supplies of these GPUs were limited — the 5090s and 5080s went out of stock on the same day that they arrived on store shelves. It took several months for the RTX 50-series to finally dip below MSRP, but this only lasted a few months as the memory shortage took hold and caused VRAM prices to skyrocket.

This means that the best graphics cards for gaming are quite expensive at the moment, with Tom’s Hardware’s GPU price tracker showing the best price for the RTX 5090 sitting at $4,381 — more than double the $1,999 MSRP that Nvidia set for the GPU. Even the RTX 5080, 5070 Ti, and 5070 aren’t immune to these price increases, with the most affordable options for the graphics cards sitting at $1,289 (29% over MSRP), $989 (32% over MSRP), and $629 (more than 14% over MSRP), respectively.

Unfortunately, this isn’t likely the worst that we will see when it comes to GPU pricing. There has been some disturbing news that prices for RTX 50-series GPUs jumped by 30% in South Korea as wafer costs from TSMC have increased, and GDDR7 modules push past $20. While this hasn’t reached the U.S. at the moment, there is fear that retailers in the country will follow suit soon.

Such is the state of the PC building industry that RTX 50-series GPUs at MSRP have now become a come-on to desperate gamers who just want to upgrade their gaming PCs for a reasonable price. Unfortunately, “Verified Priority Access IRL” is only available during the convention and only until supplies last — once there’s no more stock on site, you’d have no choice but to troll the interwebs for a deal or a secondhand unit if you refuse to pay for more than the MSRP. Alternatively, if you believe that you’ve got the skills, Nvidia is also hosting Quake III Arena RTX Remix and DOOM: The Dark Ages | Revelations challenges, where the best players will each receive an RTX 5070 Founders Edition GPU.

A developer posted on the r/ClaudeCode subreddit a major error that their AI tool executed, which resulted in the deletion of their entire drive. According to u/Ecstatic-Big5126, they instructed Opus 5 to back up their system. While the AI proceeded with the task, it thought that it had created the backup in the wrong directory and then proceeded to run an “rm -rf” command on the supposed backup. Unfortunately, it mistakenly deleted the entire profile folder in its confusion.

It seemed that the AI was running on a Unix-style shell on Windows when it confused the Unix-style path of /c/Users/ as a temporary backup because it was expecting the traditional C:\Users\ path. So, when its expectations did not match, the tool decided to run the rm -rf “/c/Users/harih/” command, proceeding to clear every file and folder in the user’s profile.

“I asked Claude Opus 5 to create a backup. Instead, it created the backup in the wrong directory and then proceeded to "rm -rf" my entire drive,” u/Ecstatic-Big5126 wrote. “After wiping everything, it just replied: "Sorry, typo." ...like nothing had happened.” They also added, “That was simultaneously the funniest and most painful AI moment I've had.”

The lesson here is that while AI LLMs are powerful tools, they still shouldn’t be given unfettered access to your system (or any system, for that matter). There have already been several examples of AI and AI agents messing up systems and deleting everything — one of the earliest examples includes an AI coding platform deleting an entire company database despite a code freeze, and a Google agentic AI wiping a user’s drive without permission.

There have been a number of high-profile mistakes of this nature. AWS has reportedly suffered from outages caused by blundering AI coding bots, while Meta’s AI Alignment director had her inbox wiped by her OpenClaw agent. PocketOS even had its entire database wiped in nine seconds by a rogue Cursor tool, which was compounded by its cloud provider’s lack of safeguards.

While the AI tool going out of bounds is the primary reason for these errors, the user is also partly to blame for thinking that it can fully understand what they want it to do. That’s why AI LLMs should never be given full access to important systems, and they shouldn’t have free rein to run delete commands like “rm -rf.”

This event will be a learning experience for u/Ecstatic-Big5126. But as AI agents increase in popularity, especially among inexperienced programmers and developers, we can only expect incidents like these to happen more frequently in the future.

The State Corporation Commission, Virginia’s independent state agency that regulates public utilities, has ordered data centers to pay for all the required transmission infrastructure that the project will use exclusively. According to Realtor.com, Governor Abigail Spanberger (D) has recently been pressing AI hyperscalers to reduce their impact on the power grid and utility prices.

Virginia currently has the greatest number of data centers across the U.S., with the state hosting at least 570 sites. Because of the massive power demand of these sites, the state has been experiencing issues with electricity price hikes, with one county even asking its employees, including schools, to conserve power. PJM Interconnection, which distributes power to the state, has increased prices by 76%, with Monitoring Analytics, the independent watchdog keeping an eye on the utility company, saying that this is mostly due to AI data centers.

The move requiring data centers to pay for their own upstream electrical infrastructure should, hopefully, ease the burden on the average Virginian. "We are taking real steps to address rising energy costs for Virginians," said Gov. Spanberger. "I will continue to work with the General Assembly and take action to make sure data centers pay their fair share, adhere to strict environmental standards, and listen to the concerns of local communities.”

This is one of the first statewide announcements that will enforce President Donald Trump’s ratepayer protection pledge. Trump summoned the biggest AI hyperscalers to the White House in early March and made them promise that they will “pay their own way” when it comes to building the infrastructure they need. But despite this, the burden of more expensive electricity hasn’t eased for the average American. The administration expanded this promise in late July to include state governors, utility companies, and data center developers.

Many critics said that this pledge is nothing but a piece of paper, with some comparing it to a “pinky promise.” After all, this is just a commitment and not a regulation that would penalize companies that don’t comply. Nevertheless, it seems that it has spurred at least one state to make a move that should, hopefully, have a material impact on the average citizen.

Aside from Virginia, Oregon is the only other state, so far, that has raised electrical rates for large consumers, like data centers. According to the Oregon POWER Act, facilities that consume 20 MW or more are assigned to a higher rate class. Portland General Electric, the state’s largest power supplier, has already implemented this, resulting in a 30% rate increase for these big power users, while also cutting residential costs by 1.3%.

While the average consumer isn’t necessarily paying for the power that data centers consume, utility companies had to conduct massive grid upgrades to support the increased demand from these developments. The utility companies then equally passed on all the necessary capital expenditure to all consumers, instead of just the data centers. By requiring data centers to spend on their own grid upgrades, further increases in electricity prices could, hopefully, be prevented.

The Nashville Metro Council just gave the go-signal to Mayor Freddie O’Connell's plan to use eminent domain to block a planned 23-acre data center campus sitting right beside the Nashville Zoo at Grassmere. According to real estate news platform CoStar, the city council approved the measure by a 27-5 vote last Wednesday, meaning the city government can now take the next steps to proceed with the legal process that will force the purchase of the property.

“I’m glad Metro Council passed our legislation that gives us the option to acquire property next to the zoo for a number of public needs,” Mayor O’Connell said in a statement. “We’re working closely with our Finance and General Services departments to plan for the site.”

The developer of the property, DC Blox, wanted to put up a 69,220-square-foot single-story data center on the site that was expected to cost more than $700 million to build. It would sit right beside the 188-acre Nashville Zoo at Grassmere, which opened in 1990 as the Grassmere Wildlife Park. This zoo is one of the biggest attractions in Tennessee, expecting to receive two million visitors annually by 2027. Aside from that, it also participates in more than 50 conservation programs with institutions across the world.

Zoo officials objected to the development, raising concerns about disruptions like noise and light pollution, among others. They even started an online petition that garnered more than 500,000 signatures by the end of July, even getting support from celebrities like Brad Paisley, Sheryl Crow, and Jack White.

DC Blox argues that 648 Grassmere Park used to provide data center functions, so putting up a newer one on the site would not necessarily disrupt the community, including its neighboring zoo. However, there have already been several widely reported incidents from across the U.S. that highlighted the noise and light pollution that zoo officials have been concerned about.

Residents in a town in Michigan have been complaining for about two years now after their neighboring data centers started emitting noise 24/7, comparing it to the sound that a vacuum makes in your living room. Aside from that, some people complain about infrasound, high- and low-frequency vibrations that do not register on decibel meters but could sometimes be felt coming from data centers and potentially cause adverse health effects. A Microsoft data center in Wisconsin is also facing a lawsuit due to noise and extreme light pollution.

While this does not mean that the proposed Nashville data center will cause a similar issue, it seems that city officials do not want to take this risk. Light and noise pollution could have adverse effects on the animals housed by the zoo, potentially disrupting their habitats and behavior.

The city council vote would allow the local government to negotiate with DC Blox for the acquisition of the property. However, this does not automatically mean that Nashville would automatically have the right to own the property. It will first have to negotiate with the owner to determine that property’s fair market value, and if the two parties cannot agree, then a judge or jury will have to determine the final amount. The company could also challenge the eminent domain claim.

There have been fears that the government will use eminent domain to advance data center projects, which was further spurred by Georgia Power’s use of the power to acquire 30 residential properties to expand the power grid. Although the utility company said that it wasn’t in the data center business, the move was made to connect a substation to a power plant, with 70% to 80% of the electricity traveling through it expected to serve data centers. But, as Nashville showed, this authority can also be used to block data center projects.

The upper stage of a SpaceX rocket that delivered two lunar landers in early 2025 is set to come crashing down on the lunar surface several months after it ended its mission. According to Japan Today, the large piece of rocket debris is expected to hit the moon at an estimated 5,400 mph or 8,690 kph, which is seven times the speed of sound.

While a piece of debris hitting the moon might seem like an inconsequential event for most people, scientists and astronomers are keeping a close eye on it because this will be one of the few times that an object will impact the moon while being observed. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter will take before-and-after photos of the impact site, while the latter will also fly close to the stricken SpaceX rocket a few minutes before it begins its final descent.

NASA has previously deliberately crashed objects on the moon — it did this with sections of the Saturn V rocket and discarded Lunar Landers to conduct seismic experiments during the Apollo missions in the 70s. It repeated the experiment in 2009 with its LCROSS mission, where it crashed the probe near the south pole of the moon in search of ice.

What interests researchers this time is how the impact will affect the surface of the moon, which is expected to deliver energy that’s equal to about three tons of TNT. Even though this might seem like a huge amount of energy, we likely cannot see the actual crash from Earth. But because the moon does not have wind or an atmosphere, the ejected material could stretch for miles and be visible on telescopes.

“The gravity on the moon is low and there is no wind to blow the dust away,” said Benjamin Fernando of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. “Part of the reason for our interest in this event is to figure out how much of a hazard debris impacts pose to future astronauts.”

Space debris is not a major concern for the moon as it is for our planet at the moment, but this might change in the near future. As the U.S. and China are locked in a space race to see who will be the first one to land on people on the moon again after more than half a century, there will soon come a time when operators cannot just leave their rocket debris in an orbital decay, lest it come crashing down on their settlements and data centers.

Seven states have reported cyberattacks on their water supply control systems, with some officials suspecting that Iran is behind these actions. According to the New York Times, there isn’t any definitive proof yet that Iran orchestrated these attacks but it said that moves like this have been escalating since the U.S. began its bombing campaign of the country. It was also noted that the attackers made zero financial demands, making it more likely to have been conducted by state actors that aren’t just motivated by money.

Minnesota was the first to report this kind of attack, with Michigan soon saying that it was targeted, too. While there have been no major disruptions that have made tap water unsafe to drink, the authorities across local and state governments are still on the lookout for potential problems. They’re particularly concerned about older computer systems that monitor water quality, adjust chemical treatments, and control water pressure, especially those that are connected to the internet.

Braham, Minnesota, is one of the areas affected by the cyberattacks. The mayor of the small city, which has a population of less than 2,000 people and is located about 50 miles north of Minneapolis, said it has already received guidance on how to resolve the issue and strengthen its defenses against future attacks. It’s currently using manual control to keep the water service on, but its mayor, Nate George, told the publication, “I think the troubling thing on the horizon is how do we move forward to a more secure system. IT infrastructure upgrades are very costly, and we are a very small municipality.”

He also repeated the suspicions that some federal officials had but declined to confirm. “We’re getting bits and pieces of information from the state of Minnesota and the F.B.I. They are pretty sure it’s Iranian actors.”

While states scramble to protect their utilities and other critical infrastructure, the White House has downplayed the suspected state-sponsored cyberattacks. President Donald Trump told a reporter, “I think Minnesota is behind it. I don’t think there was an Iranian cyberattack.”

This isn’t the first time that Iranian hackers have hit a U.S. institution during the 2026 war, but it’s the first time that essential services and infrastructure within the mainland have been affected. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has previously warned about potential Iranian cyberattacks, but smaller municipalities remain vulnerable.

Iran was also once on the receiving end of a cyberattack that many experts link to the U.S. The most famous of these was Stuxnet, which was supposedly used in 2009 to significantly damage and destroy critical tools used by the Iranian nuclear program. More recently, the CanisterWorm malware attacked Iranian machines and wiped them clean for no apparent reason. Again, no one has claimed responsibility for this attack.

Wars have always been fought on land and on sea, and more recently, in the air and in space. But as the internet has become indispensable for society, cyberspace has quickly become a fifth domain that states must protect and dominate. “This is what modern warfare looks like,” Gov. Tim Walz said on X.

Elon Musk’s Colossus data centers that sit near the border between Tennessee and Mississippi will finally be removed starting this month. According to the company, the 69 temporary mobile turbines, which have been the subject of a lawsuit that claims they have been causing pollution, are going to be completely removed by July 2027, meaning it will take the company 12 months to withdraw the trailer-mounted generators from its premises. This may sound confusing, as they’re “portable” generators, after all, but it seems that SpaceXAI is removing them in phases as its 1.2GW power plant slowly comes online.

SpaceXAI achieved one of the fastest data center deployments ever after it set up 100,000 Nvidia H200 GPUs in 19 days — something that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said usually takes four years or more. Musk achieved this by bringing in his own power instead of waiting to get connected to the grid, which was considered a novel idea at that time. Today, a few data center operators, like OpenAI, are following Musk’s footsteps and deploying their own turbines to power their servers without relying on other providers.

But even though the idea feels innovative, the community surrounding the Colossus 1 and Colossus 2 data centers has been complaining about the pollution that these mobile turbines bring. They say that these turbines didn’t have the required permits to operate, although the company argued that the mobile and temporary nature of these units exempted them. The EPA said earlier this year that these units aren’t exempt from permits, but SpaceXAI continued to operate them anyway. It has even got to the point that the NAACP filed a case over these unpermitted turbines, although the DOJ weighed in, saying that removing them would put national security at risk as Colossus 2 “supports mission-critical operations.”

Despite that, it seems that SpaceXAI has finally settled into an agreement with the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality. It’s if the 1.2GW power plant replacing these mobile turbines is the same one that Musk is importing from overseas, but the important part is that it’s approved under a Clean Air Act permit. Aside from that, the company also said that it’s equipping all its mobile turbines with “advanced emission control technologies,” which should reduce the environmental impact of its power sources.